


Habit

by Aramley



Category: The Nice Guys (2016)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:40:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28140279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aramley/pseuds/Aramley
Summary: Once is a mistake, twice is a pattern, three times is a habit.
Relationships: Jackson Healy/Holland March
Comments: 11
Kudos: 91
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Habit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThrillingDetectiveTales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide [ThrillingDetectiveTales](%E2%80%9C)! I hope you enjoy this fic!

Once is a mistake, twice is a pattern, three times is a habit, Jackson thinks to himself, looking down at March on his knees. March is flushed like a drunkard and his lips are pink and slick. He swipes at his mouth and moustache with the back of his hand in a way that makes Jackson’s stomach clench all over again even though he came, at the most, thirty seconds ago. March is breathing heavily too, which Jackson isn’t judging, because he himself is panting like a sprinter. Adrenaline, man, what a drug. Makes you do crazy things. That’s three times now. Fuck. 

“Fuck,” March says, an unconscious echo. “Goddamn.”

“Yeah,” Jackson says, heavily. “Did you - ?”

“I did,” March says, wincing, sounding a little embarrassed. He presses the heel of his hand against his crotch. “I really fucking did.”

Jackson huffs. “Lucky you wore the dark suit today.”

“Fuck you,” says March, but without much heat in it. “Do you have a handkerchief?”

Jackson looks at him. “A handkerchief?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m not a Victorian dandy, so no, I don’t carry a handkerchief.”

“Don’t look at me like that, lots of - you know what, never mind.” March reaches a hand - the one he’d rubbed across his mouth, the one he’d pressed against himself - up to Jackson. “Gimme a hand. I don’t have the knees for this anymore, I swear to God.”

Jackson hauls him up. March stumbles against him a little as he comes up, bringing their faces close together for a second. Then he sways away, reaching down to brush imaginary dirt away from the knees of his dark suit, like that’s the thing he should be worried about and not the fact that he’s going to have to walk out of this god damn alleyway after he’s just come in his pants.

“We gotta start picking cleaner alleyways to do this in,” March says, still brushing his knees. “Or you gotta start picking up my dry cleaning tabs. Either way, man, my wardrobe is not holding up.”

Jackson’s on the verge of protesting that it wasn’t him who dragged them in the dark shadow of a dumpster and dropped to his knees, but his brain’s kind of hung up on the implication of what March just said. Like they’re going to keep doing this. Like March expects it. Like it’s a thing now. Maybe it’s a thing now. Three times is a thing, right?

“We should get out of here,” Jackson says, instead of anything else. “I’m pretty sure they’re not going to double back this way, now.”

“Yeah. Jesus, it’s gotta be like a three mile walk back to the car,” March says. Jackson looks at him. He’s smoothed his hair back but he’s still a little sweaty at the temples and his mouth is still all flushed and swollen. Lascivious, Jackson thinks. That was a word of the day on the calendar, not long back. Feeling or revealing an overt sexual interest or desire. Jesus.

“Come on,” Jackson says. “We better get back.”

“Sure thing,” March says, giving Jackson a once over. He raises an eyebrow. “But you might want to put your dick away first, man.”

Jackson glances down. Fuck. He puts his dick away.

-

The first time they’d fucked on the job, March had nearly gotten shot. 

Well, turned out the gun hadn’t been loaded, and the kid on the operating end of it had been so high he probably couldn’t have hit the Hollywood hills if he’d been standing right in front of them, but there’d been a moment there, a long one, where neither Jackson nor March had known that. Afterwards - when the kid had split and neither of them had chased after him - March had been buzzed with adrenaline, and so had Jackson, and when March had started babbling about involuntary physiological responses Jackson had looked down and spotted March’s boner and had some kind of involuntary physical response of his own, cause suddenly he had his hand on it, right down March’s pants there in the fucking alleyway, both of them shoved up against the filthy brick wall. March was chanting, _oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fu-hu-huuuuck, wait, lemme_ , and then Jackson had a hand down his own pants. 

Jackson hadn’t had a hand on his dick since his wife had left him, and not with any enthusiasm since way before that. So it was fast for him, that first time. For March, too, which was gratifying. After, he’d been expecting it to be awkward, but it wasn’t. “Sex and death,” March had said, sagely. His head was tipped back against the brick wall, and he was breathing heavily. His Adam’s apple bobbed when he swallowed. “It’s a whole thing. ‘S what the philosophers say.” Jackson was staring at him. “What philosophers have you read?” March had groaned. “Are you seriously trying to talk about philosophy to me right now?” “You - you just,” Jackson said. “Shh,” said March, rolling his head from side to side. “Stop, just stop killing the buzz, man,” and they were in an alleyway, and they’d just jerked each other off, and suddenly Jackson was laughing, and then March was too, so maybe it didn’t have to be weird after all. \- 

Out on the street, in the broad daylight, things seem even more surreal. March walks a little funny all the way back to the car, doing some kind of a wide-legged shimmy on every couple of steps as the mess in his pants gets more and more uncomfortable. It gives Jackson a hysterical feeling and he keeps sniggering like a teenager, until March notices and digs an elbow right in his ribs. 

“Fuck you,” he hisses. “This is your fucking fault.”

“Sorry, sorry,” says Jackson, but he still has to turn away every now and then when March does his little John Wayne hip flex. Jesus, they’re just walking down the street. He feels like everyone around them can tell, except nobody’s even looking at them. No one gives a fuck. No one can tell. It’s four-thirty in the afternoon and Jackson just got his dick sucked by his fucking business partner and nobody knows. Three times now! And nobody knows! Jackson is maybe losing his mind a little. Maybe it’s the, what are they called, the chemicals you get after sex. Endorphins.

Eventually, they get back to the car. 

“You drive,” March says, tossing him the keys.

Jackson weighs them in his palm. “I thought you wanted to go straight back home.”

“I do.

“So you drive and you can drop me off on the way.”

“Oh come on,” March wheedles, like the little bitch he is. “I’m not going all the way by your place when we’re this side of town. Come back to the house, you can clean up there. Hell, stay over. Holly’s making lasagna.”

“Jesus Christ,” Jackson complains, but he rounds the car anyway and slides into the driver’s seat. March does a nerdy fist pump and slides into the passenger side, making a noise of discomfort as he does. He tugs at the fabric around his crotch, grimacing.

“Next time you swallow,” he says.

Jackson stalls the car.

-

Detective work was mostly the way March had sold it that first day - you drove around, you talked to people, the sun went down and came up and nothing much changed. Only sometimes you talked to the wrong people, sometimes you walked into the wrong bar, sometimes the person you were looking for was pretty vehement about not wanting to be found. Sometimes the person you were looking for had a knife, sometimes they pulled that knife on you, sometimes they put it to your partner’s throat.

“I’m not going back,” the guy whined, as March had said, “Why the fuck is it always me, huh?”

“No-one’s taking you back anywhere,” Jackson had said, his hands spread out peaceably. 

“I’m serious,” March said. He was looking right at Jackson. “Do I look like a soft touch? Am I an easy target? Is it ‘cause of my slender frame?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Jackson and the mark said, earnestly and in unison.

“I’m just saying,” said March. “I feel like I’m being underestimated.”

“I’ll cut your goddamn throat if it’ll make you feel better,” the guy had snarled, right into March’s ear, and maybe March felt his grip slip as the guy turned to do it, because suddenly he put an elbow into the guy’s gut and both of them were going down. Jackson sprinted forward. The knife clattered to the ground.

Later, when they were safely in the car, Jackson’s knuckles were bruised and March had a thin red line on his neck, beading blood where the knife had pressed too close. Without thinking, Jackson put his hand on it. His fingers wrapped nearly all the way around March’s neck, and March’s pulse jumped against his palm.

“Oh, shit,” March had said, eyes going wide and dark. He reached for Jackson, and that was the second time.

-

Holly’s not home yet by the time they get back to the house, which Jackson is grateful for. He loves the kid, truly, she’s the greatest, but he absolutely cannot face her right now.

“I call first shower,” says March, heading left down the hallway without so much as a backwards glance.

“Thanks, that’s very hospitable,” Jackson calls after him, and March turns enough to give him a shit-eating grin and the finger as he slams into the bathroom. Jackson shakes his head and wanders into the kitchen for a glass of water, and then down the hall to March’s bedroom, where he keeps a shirt or two for nights when a case runs long and it’s easier to just crash on the couch instead of heading back to his own place. 

He’s rifling through the mess of March’s closet looking for a shirt when March comes into the room with a towel around his hips and freezes. Jackson freezes in turn, and holds up the shirt.

“I was just,” he says.

“Oh, yeah,” says March, blinking dumbly. “Uh. Shower’s free.”

“Right,” says Jackson, and he should probably move, but to get to the shower he’ll have to go through the door, and March is still standing in the doorway holding a towel around his hips. His hair’s wet, dripping water that runs down his chest. Jackson abruptly stops looking at March’s skinny bare chest and brings his eyes up to March’s, and March’s eyes flick sideways, unmistakably, to the bed. 

Are they going to - are they going to fuck here? In March’s bedroom? In a bed? Jackson’s heart starts pounding like he’s being chased, adrenaline kicking in. Arousal kicking in too. If they fuck here, with no excuses, it’s definitely a thing.

The moment stretches out, tense as a tripwire. And just when Jackson can’t take it anymore, and opens his mouth to say something, he hears the front door opening and Holly’s voice calling out, “Dad? Are you home?”

“I’m here! I’m here. Here is, uh, where I am,” March calls back, his voice high and strangled. Jackson might actually strangle him.

“Is Mister Healy here, too?”

“Hey, kid,” Jackson calls, his own voice sounding much less like he’s trying to hide something, he’s pleased to note. 

“Hi!” Holly calls, brightly. “Are you staying for dinner? I’m making lasagna.”

March is still looking at him and Jackson feels like he’s about three seconds away from losing his mind. 

“Wouldn’t miss it!” he calls back.

-

At dinner Holly makes them tell the story of the day, which they do - right up to the point in the alleyway, where the story stops being rated for family consumption. Fortunately, Holly gets stuck on the fact that they got outrun by a couple of skinny pot dealers and presses there rather than any subsequent sore spots. 

“So what you’re saying is, you lost them,” Holly says.

“They were fast and highly motivated,” March says, defensively. 

Holly tilts her head. “Whereas you were - ?”

“Less fast,” Jackson says.

“And insufficiently compensated,” March adds.

Holly rolls her eyes. God, Jackson really likes that kid. 

After dinner Holly abandons them for her homework. Jackson and March do the dishes together while they talk through the next steps on the case and it’s just - nice. That’s the thing. They work well together, underneath all the bitching. Jackson doesn’t want to fuck that up. 

Later they go out to the backyard, Jackson with a beer and March without. The landlord finally filled the pool when he refurbished the place and it’s actually nice out there now. March rolls up his trouser legs and lets his bony feet hang in the clear water, lying back to smoke a cigarette. Jackson sprawls out next to him.

“You think we should talk about, you know,” Jackson says. He gestures between them with his beer bottle. 

March takes a long drag of his cigarette. “I absolutely do not, thanks for asking.”

Jackson shrugs. “Okay.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Do I want to? Obviously I don’t want to. I want to have this conversation with you like I want a hole in the head,” Jackson says. “I’m saying should we, that’s the question. You know. For the sake of our partnership.”

“God, what are you, a shrink?” March grumbles, looking away. 

“Fuck you,” Jackson says.

“Well, that’s kind of the issue, isn’t it,” March says, smirking sideways at Jackson. He’s such a smartass, Jackson can’t stand him sometimes. He drains his beer. 

“I’m beat,” he says. “Mind if I hit the couch?”

“What? It’s like nine pm,” March says, looking confused. 

“Boy, is that right?” Jackson says. He starts to push up. 

“Hey, hey,” March says, reaching out and snagging Jackson’s wrist with his free hand, keeping him there. “Don’t get mad.”

“What’s there to get mad about?” says Jackson, steady and even.

“Okay, look,” March says. He drops Jackson’s wrist and sits up. “Look. If we - if we talked about it I might be forced to admit certain things.”

Jackson watches him steadily. “Certain things.”

“Certain,” March starts, patently struggling. “Certain. Uh. Feelings.”

“Feelings,” Jackson says, letting him wriggle.

“That might put a strain on our working relationship,” March continues. He flicks the stub of his cigarette into the pool, which Jackson distantly thinks that Holly is going to kick his ass for when she sees it. “So what I was hoping to do is crush those feelings down real tight into a ball where neither of us have to acknowledge them, and then we can keep working together _and_ as a bonus maybe I can keep sucking your dick now and then. But if you really want to drag it out into the open, then fine. Whatever.”

Jackson sits with that for a moment, rolling it over and over. His heart is beating fast again. Adrenaline, man. Hell of a drug. 

“March, you’re a fucking idiot,” he says.

March huffs a laugh. “Yeah, yeah, story of my life.”

He’s not laughing when Jackson slings an arm around his neck, and kisses him.

Once is a mistake, twice is a pattern, three times is a habit. Jackson wants to find out what comes next.


End file.
